Coke ovens have a structure wherein a carbonizing chamber and a combustion chamber are alternately arranged in the direction of coke oven battery. From a coal charging car which travels on the top of the coke oven in the direction of coke oven battery, coal is charged into each of the carbonizing chambers, and heat from each of the combustion chambers is transferred to the carbonizing chambers. In such a way, the charged coal is subjected to dry distillation, so as to produce coke.
Many of coke ovens of this type have gone through over thirty years since they were built. Thus, the coke ovens have become decrepit. About firebricks which constitute side walls of the carbonizing chambers, a cycle is repeated wherein carbon adhering to damaged regions of the oven walls is peeled by push-out of coke or charge of coal so that the oven walls are further damaged. As a result, factors of hindering the oven operation, such as a deformation of the oven walls, have been standing out.
In particular, the adhesion state of carbon is delicately varied in daily operations. Thus, to observe the state of the oven wall is an extremely important inspection item for making the operations stable.
When coke is pushed out as illustrated in FIG. 6, specifically, this oven observing is carried out during the oven door is opened and pushing out a red heat coke 51 subjected to dry distillation in a carbonizing chamber 50, by means of a ram head 53 at the tip of a ram beam 52, into a guide car (not illustrated) waiting outside the oven. Usually, the observing is performed by an operator 55 visually at the position of a pushing-out machine operating room 54.
Many restrictions are imposed on the oven observation as follows: the operator cannot go up near the oven since the temperature of the inside of the oven is as high as about 1100° C.; visibility inside the oven is poor since the oven depth is as long as about 15 m while the oven wall width is as narrow as about 450 mm; and the period when the oven inside can be observed, which depends on the temperature for the operation thereof, is restricted into the range of about 2 to 10 minutes.
From such situations, it is said that even if the operator 55 is a skillful person, the operator cannot observe the whole of the oven inside visually. In the figure, reference number 56 represents carbon adhering to the oven wall. The carbon tends to be adhered to regions below individual coal charging openings 57.
Thus, suggested is a method of inserting a camera cooled with water or air into an oven, projecting a wall-face-image taken with the camera onto a screen of a monitor arranged outside the oven, and observing the state of damage (see, for example, Japanese Utility Publication No. 5-27599(U)).
As illustrated in FIG. 7, an oven observing equipment of this type has a cooling tube 62 in the form of a double tube composed of an outer cooling tube 60 and an inner cooling tube 61, and a observing window 63 made of heat-resistant glass is provided to one of side faces of the tip region of this cooling tube 62.
In the cooling tube 62, a reflecting mirror 64 is arranged to oppose to the observing window 63. An optical path bent on the reflecting mirror 64 is guided into a zoom lens 65, thereby making it possible to take an image of a zoomed-up oven wall with a CCD camera 66.
Cooling water or cooling air F is introduced into a passage between the outer cooling tube 60 and the inner cooling tube 61.
A plurality of thermoelectric cooling elements 67 for generating Peltier effect are arranged on the inner wall of the cooling tube 62, so as to protect the CCD camera 66 and other measuring devices from high temperature.
According to the above oven observing equipment, even an unskillful operator can observe the depth of the oven inside. However, according to this oven observing equipment, from the viewpoint of the structure wherein the reflecting mirror 64 and others are used to observe the oven wall indirectly, there are some cases that the oven inside may not be precisely observed because the image projected onto the monitor screen is disturbed or the focal point is shifted out of position only by applying vibration to the equipment, or the like.
Additionally, there remains a problem that the oven observing equipment becomes large-sized since there is a necessity that the optical path from the reflecting mirror 64 to the zoom lens 65 is made long.
The reason why the reflecting mirror 64 is used to observe the oven inside indirectly in this way is that if the CCD camera 66 is arranged near the observing window 63, which is not made of a double tube, the CCD camera 66 is exposed to high temperature so as to break down.
Since the cooling with the thermoelectric cooling elements 67 is indirect cooling through air, the cooling speed is low and the temperature is not easily controlled. Additionally, the cooling is performed in a closed chamber, and thus, the air therein is not stirred so that an even cooling effect and a required temperature fall cannot be obtained. Even if the ability of the thermoelectric cooling elements 67 is desired to be made high, the size of the thermoelectric cooling elements 67 cannot be made large since the space in the cooling tube 62 is limited.
The present invention has been made, considering the above-mentioned problems in conventional oven observing equipments. A first object thereof is to provide an oven observing equipment making it possible to observe the inside of an oven turned into a high temperature precisely. A second object thereof is to provide a push-out ram that has an oven observing equipment and is made compact so that an oven observing equipment can be arranged to a ram beam.